Attorney David Marston and former Bush-administration official John Yoo had an op‑ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal making the case against the White House’s efforts to force federal contractors to disclose contributions, not just to candidates, but to any group that might run political advertisements. As Make No Law readers are aware, this is a […]

Freedom of speech is on the rise. America’s campaign finance censors are losing in the courts. They are losing in the legislatures. And, perhaps most importantly, they are losing on the battlefield of ideas. But despite all of that, the forces of censorship are as dogged and relentless as a cyborg killing machine from the […]

Proponents of taxpayer funding for political campaigns, such as Arizona’s “Clean Elections” system, have long argued that it would make races more competitive, reducing the advantages enjoyed by incumbents and easing the path to office for challengers. A new paper finds just the opposite: Public funding increases the incumbency advantage. The paper, by Timothy Werner […]

We previously blogged about FEC Commissioner Don McGahn’s recent op-ed in Roll Call, which took self-styled “reformers” to task for accusing him of failing to follow his oath of office. Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW) has responded to McGahn’s charges of baseless name-calling with . . . more name-calling. Here’s a […]

FEC Commissioner Don McGahn, a staunch supporter of the First Amendment, has penned a stunning rebuke of Norm Ornstein and other campaign finance “reformers.” The entire op-ed is worth reading, but here’s a particularly great passage: The reality is that Ornstein and his reformer cohorts are experiencing the demise of their longed-for utopia and […]

Like many people, professor of law and former congressional candidate James L. Huffman had always assumed that public disclosure of political contributions was a good thing. But as Huffman recounts in The Wall Street Journal, his opinion changed when he ran for office as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Oregon in […]

Last week, I argued the case of Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the constitutionality of the “matching funds” provision of Arizona’s public financing system. One of the issues was whether this law was implemented in order to “fight corruption” in politics. The proponents of the law argued that […]

One of the more persistent myths of government campaign financing programs is that their purpose is to enhance First Amendment values. Justice Kagan made that claim on Monday when she said during the oral argument in the IJ/Goldwater challenge to Arizona’s system that with government financing, “it’s more speech all the way around.” The Huffington […]

Audio from the oral argument in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett is now available. IJ-WA Executive Director Bill Maurer leads off the argument, followed by Bradley Phillips, defending the law, at 25:40. William Jay, defending the law on behalf of the United States as amicus curiae, follows at 46:00. Maurer’s rebuttal begins at […]